On Fox News Sunday today, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked
about his claim that 100 years in Iraq “would be fine”
with him, he said “it’s not a matter of how long Americans
stay, it’s a matter of American casualties.” “And
those casualties are coming down,” added McCain.
McCain then declared that “we don’t need to have
casualties” because of the “surge,” which he
says is “experiencing significant success”:
One of the obligations, unfortunately of being a great superpower,
is that we have to take care of the world’s security.
But we don’t need to have casualties because we can succeed
in this strategy called the surge, which is now, I think experiencing
significant success.
Watch it:
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Unfortunately, McCain’s claim that U.S. troop “casualties
are coming down” is misleading happy talk. In reality, casualties
actually increased this past month:
Not only did casualties increase in January, but the number
of U.S. troops who “died from hostile action” was
higher in January than the total number of casualties in December
2007.
In declaring “significant success” in Iraq, McCain
appears to be using the Bush administration calculus that says
increasing levels of violence are equal to “signs of success.”
